The FreeBSD Project

FreeBSD is a registered trademark of Wind River Systems, Inc. This is expected to
change soon.

Intel, Celeron, EtherExpress, i386, i486, Itanium, Pentium, and Xeon are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and
other countries.

Motif, OSF/1, and UNIX are registered trademarks and IT DialTone and The Open Group
are trademarks of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.

Sparc, Sparc64, SPARCEngine, and UltraSPARC are trademarks of SPARC International, Inc
in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based
upon architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their
products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this document, and
the FreeBSD Project was aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been followed
by the ``™'' or the ``®'' symbol.

This document gives a brief introduction to FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE. It includes some
information on how to obtain FreeBSD, a listing of various ways to contact the FreeBSD
Project, and pointers to some other sources of information.

This distribution is a release of FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE. This is a ``point release''.
It exists primarily to address some specific issues found (after-the-fact) in the FreeBSD
5.2-RELEASE distribution. Changes made for this point release are described, in the
release notes. Generally speaking, the features of this release are unchanged compared to
FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE.

FreeBSD is an operating system based on 4.4 BSD Lite for Intel, AMD, Cyrix or NexGen
``x86'' based PC hardware (i386™), NEC PC-9801/9821
series PCs and compatibles (pc98), DEC/Compaq/HP Alpha computers (alpha), and UltraSPARC® machines (Sparc64®). Versions for the IA64 (ia64), PowerPC® (PowerPC), and AMD
``Hammer'' (amd64) architectures are currently under development as well. FreeBSD works
with a wide variety of peripherals and configurations and can be used for everything from
software development to games to Internet Service Provision.

This release of FreeBSD contains everything you need to run such a system, including
full source code for the kernel and all utilities in the base distribution. With the
source distribution installed, you can literally recompile the entire system from scratch
with one command, making it ideal for students, researchers, or users who simply want to
see how it all works.

A large collection of third-party ported software (the ``Ports Collection'') is also
provided to make it easy to obtain and install all your favorite traditional UNIX® utilities for FreeBSD. Each ``port'' consists of a set
of scripts to retrieve, configure, build, and install a piece of software, with a single
command. Over 10,000 ports, from editors to programming languages to graphical
applications, make FreeBSD a powerful and comprehensive operating environment that
extends far beyond what's provided by many commercial versions of UNIX. Most ports are also available as pre-compiled
``packages'', which can be quickly installed from the installation program.

FreeBSD -RELEASE distributions may be ordered on CDROM or DVD from several publishers.
This is frequently the most convenient way to obtain FreeBSD for new installations, as it
provides a convenient way to quickly reinstall the system if necessary. Some
distributions include some of the optional, precompiled ``packages'' from the FreeBSD
Ports Collection.

A list of the CDROM and DVD publishers known to the project are listed in the ``Obtaining FreeBSD'' appendix to the Handbook.

You can use FTP to retrieve FreeBSD and any or all of its optional packages from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/, which is the
official FreeBSD release site, or any of its ``mirrors''.

Lists of locations that mirror FreeBSD can be found in the FTP Sites section of the Handbook, or on the http://mirrorlist.FreeBSD.org/
Web pages. Finding a close (in networking terms) mirror from which to download the
distribution is highly recommended.

Additional mirror sites are always welcome. Contact <freebsd-admin@FreeBSD.org> for
more details on becoming an official mirror site. You can also find useful information
for mirror sites at the Mirroring
FreeBSD article.

Mirrors generally contain the floppy disk images necessary to begin an installation,
as well as the distribution files needed for the install process itself. Many mirrors
also contain the ISO images necessary to create a CDROM of a FreeBSD release.

If you're tracking the 5-CURRENT development efforts, you must join the FreeBSD-CURRENT mailing list, in order to keep abreast of recent
developments and changes that may affect the way you use and maintain the system.

Being a largely-volunteer effort, the FreeBSD Project is always happy to have extra
hands willing to help--there are already far more desired enhancements than there is time
to implement them. To contact the developers on technical matters, or with offers of
help, please send mail to the FreeBSD
technical discussions mailing list.

Please note that these mailing lists can experience significant amounts of traffic. If you have slow or expensive
mail access, or are only interested in keeping up with major FreeBSD events, you may find
it preferable to subscribe instead to the FreeBSD
announcements mailing list.

All of the mailing lists can be freely joined by anyone wishing to do so. Visit the FreeBSD Mailman Info
Page. This will give you more information on joining the various lists, accessing
archives, etc. There are a number of mailing lists targeted at special interest groups
not mentioned here; more information can be obtained either from the Mailman pages or the
mailing lists
section of the FreeBSD Web site.

Important: Do not send
email to the lists asking to be subscribed. Use the Mailman interface instead.

Suggestions, bug reports and contributions of code are always valued--please do not
hesitate to report any problems you may find. Bug reports with attached fixes are of
course even more welcome.

The preferred method to submit bug reports from a machine with Internet mail
connectivity is to use the send-pr(1)
command. ``Problem Reports'' (PRs) submitted in this way will be filed and their progress
tracked; the FreeBSD developers will do their best to respond to all reported bugs as
soon as possible. A list of all active PRs is available on the FreeBSD Web site; this
list is useful to see what potential problems other users have encountered.

Note that send-pr(1)
itself is a shell script that should be easy to move even onto a non-FreeBSD system.
Using this interface is highly preferred. If, for some reason, you are unable to use send-pr(1) to
submit a bug report, you can try to send it to the FreeBSD
problem reports mailing list.

For more information, ``Writing FreeBSD Problem Reports'', available on the FreeBSD Web site,
has a number of helpful hints on writing and submitting effective problem reports.

A number of other files provide more specific information about this release
distribution. These files are provided in various formats. Most distributions will
include both ASCII text (.TXT) and HTML (.HTM) renditions. Some distributions may also include other formats
such as PostScript (.PS) or Portable Document Format (.PDF).

README.TXT: This file, which gives some general information
about FreeBSD as well as some cursory notes about obtaining a distribution.

EARLY.TXT: A guide for early adopters of FreeBSD
5.2.1-RELEASE. Highly recommended reading for users new to FreeBSD 5-CURRENT and/or the
5.X series of releases.

RELNOTES.TXT: The release notes, showing what's new and
different in FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE compared to the previous release (FreeBSD
5.1-RELEASE).

HARDWARE.TXT: The hardware compatibility list, showing
devices with which FreeBSD has been tested and is known to work.

INSTALL.TXT: Installation instructions for installing
FreeBSD from its distribution media.

ERRATA.TXT: Release errata. Late-breaking, post-release
information can be found in this file, which is principally applicable to releases (as
opposed to snapshots). It is important to consult this file before installing a release
of FreeBSD, as it contains the latest information on problems which have been found and
fixed since the release was created.

Note: Several of these documents (in particular, RELNOTES.TXT, HARDWARE.TXT, and INSTALL.TXT) contain information that is specific to a particular
hardware architecture. For example, the alpha release notes contain information not
applicable to the i386, and vice versa. The architecture
for which each document applies will be listed in that document's title.

On platforms that support sysinstall(8)
(currently alpha, i386, ia64, pc98, and Sparc64), these documents are generally available via the
Documentation menu during installation. Once the system is installed, you can revisit
this menu by re-running the sysinstall(8)
utility.

Note: It is extremely important to read the errata for any given release before
installing it, to learn about any ``late-breaking news'' or post-release problems. The
errata file accompanying each release (most likely right next to this file) is already
out of date by definition, but other copies are kept updated on the Internet and should
be consulted as the ``current errata'' for this release. These other copies of the errata
are located at http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/ (as well as any sites which keep
up-to-date mirrors of this location).

As with almost all UNIX like operating systems, FreeBSD
comes with a set of on-line manual pages, accessed through the man(1) command
or through the hypertext
manual pages gateway on the FreeBSD Web site. In general, the manual pages provide
information on the different commands and APIs available to the FreeBSD user.

In some cases, manual pages are written to give information on particular topics.
Notable examples of such manual pages are tuning(7) (a
guide to performance tuning), security(7) (an
introduction to FreeBSD security), and style(9) (a
style guide to kernel coding).

Two highly-useful collections of FreeBSD-related information, maintained by the
FreeBSD Project, are the FreeBSD Handbook and FreeBSD FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions
document). On-line versions of the Handbook and FAQ are
always available from the FreeBSD Documentation page or its mirrors. If you install the doc distribution set, you can use a Web browser to read the
Handbook and FAQ locally.

A number of on-line books and articles, also maintained by the FreeBSD Project, cover
more-specialized, FreeBSD-related topics. This material spans a wide range of topics,
from effective use of the mailing lists, to dual-booting FreeBSD with other operating
systems, to guidelines for new committers. Like the Handbook and FAQ, these documents are
available from the FreeBSD Documentation Page or in the doc
distribution set.

A listing of other books and documents about FreeBSD can be found in the bibliography of the FreeBSD Handbook. Because of FreeBSD's strong UNIX heritage, many other articles and books written for UNIX systems are applicable as well, some of which are also
listed in the bibliography.

FreeBSD represents the cumulative work of many hundreds, if not thousands, of
individuals from around the world who have worked countless hours to bring about this
release. For a complete list of FreeBSD developers and contributors, please see ``Contributors to FreeBSD'' on the FreeBSD Web site or any of its
mirrors.

Special thanks also go to the many thousands of FreeBSD users and testers all over the
world, without whom this release simply would not have been possible.